Decoding top publisher types in performance marketing Share via

By Mohamed Nour

Performance marketing is one of the most preferred tools brands use to drive the growth of their e-commerce businesses. In this form of marketing, brands collaborate with affiliates or publishers, who promote their products on their websites. A publisher earns a commission whenever a sale is made through their referrals. E-commerce companies partner with various publishers to increase the sales on their platforms. Moreover, it is one of the few forms of advertising where you pay for marketing spending only after the sale.  In this blog, we will discuss the most popular types of publishers who are primarily driving the performance marketing space and how each one of them helps the brands to improve their success rates.

SEO Affiliates

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the first type we will discuss, considering its time-consuming and winning white hat method for affiliates. For the SEO to act fast, it must run a paid AdWords campaign and use other paid advertising to redirect its traffic into a few clicks, leading to the advertiser’s product offer. Using SEO can be effective; plus, there are many points to count. Being an SEO affiliate requires investing in paid content, which is worth it. Also, SEO affiliates have to plan the Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) to estimate the profit from the payout expected to make from the affiliate program. Sometimes Cost Per Click (CPC) on any ads, as a click may not convert into a sale, and an affiliate may lose ad spend.

Review Websites

Publishers use client reviews based on their previous purchase experience for a specific product. Online shoppers notice the difference between the Ad content and promotion terms and conditions, so once they initially decide to buy, they search for feedback from previous clients to help them make the final purchase decision. Online shoppers are not looking for a specific person who had the last experience purchase but considers the anonymous review negative or positive. Many platforms are there collecting reviews on a particular niche or product to be a reference for similar online shoppers so they can use it to reach the ideal target audience and promote affiliate programs. Once publishers collect enough reviews and feedback from many previous online shoppers, they can monetize their review website by promoting other products by coupon discounts or referral links.

Comparison Websites

Price comparison websites compare similar products’ prices in different stores and across different brands. With the rise of the e-commerce industry, comparison shopping has become a practice of online shoppers. According to some estimates, more than ten million consumers use price comparison websites before ordering online. Many popular price comparison websites offer the best deals available online in just a few clicks. Online shoppers can grab a great deal with user-friendly website navigation even if it isn’t Black Friday! When anyone searches for a favorite product, these price comparison engines list brands that sell the desired item. However, shoppers must read the product and service reviews before placing an order. Many brands offer exclusive prices to price comparison websites to attract a budget-conscious audience. The price comparison websites take more than $800 million in commissions each year.

Coupon Websites

What is the most popular way of affiliate marketing? The answer is promo codes. Discounted prices and extensive sale campaigns drive online shoppers, and both are helping to make the shopper add the product to the basket and proceed with checkout. Some websites work with their current subscriber base offering the site with coupon codes they know work, whereas some coupon websites work with the brand directly to use their assigned codes. Most advertisers prefer the coupon discount model because it will promote their brand via the publisher’s website, which will help the online shopper select their product from others based on the opportunity to save more and use the promo code. Few advertisers make an effort to pull out from this way of marketing as they see it as undervaluing their brand, which it can sometimes do. Having said this, in some cases, using coupon website publishers increases awareness and traffic and pushes up their revenue more than it would have been without it. Brand guidelines are critical for many advertisers and publishers’ use of their brand assets.

Social Media

Social media affiliate is another popular type we explain here in our article. In the last few years, social media marketers have promoted products. Some social media affiliates working on coupon models promote those coupons for many brands. They started to monetize their followers and fans across different social media platforms. The coupon model is restricted from some social media platforms. Still, brands can promote branded content only directly via social media.